CCU PHIL 101 - CLASSICAL CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

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1Classical Conceptual AnalysisDennis EarlPhilosophy involves the exercise of one’s rational capacities in seeking correct answers tothe most fundamental questions there are. That capacity includes at least two components: Oneis the ability to grasp various logical relationships that may exist between premises andconclusions, and another is the ability to engage in analysis. But what is analysis? In one sense,analysis is an activity: For instance, when Socrates asks a question like “What is justice?,” hewants to know more clearly what is meant by the term ‘justice’, which is just a desire to knowwhat the nature of justice really is. The activity of analysis seeks to answer such Socraticquestions. Now, the product of such an activity will be a proposition that says what justice is, orwhat piety is, or what knowledge is, etc. and such a proposition can also be said to give themeaning of the terms ‘justice’, ‘piety’, ‘knowledge’, etc. Such a proposition is also called ananalysis. So there are at least two different senses of the term ‘analysis’: One sense refers to anactivity, and another refers to the product of that activity.But why does analysis matter to doing philosophy? Consider the following argument:(P1) Killing a person is morally wrong.(P2) A fetus is a person.(P3) Abortion is the act of killing a fetus. (C) Abortion is morally wrong.The argument is valid: The conclusion is guaranteed to be true if the premises are all true. Sowhether the argument is sound or not is a matter of the truth of the premises. But what is meantby ‘person’, ‘killing’, and ‘morally wrong’ here? What an analysis of the meanings of those2terms would do is provide some correct account of what a person really is, what killing is, andwhat it is for something to be morally wrong. For instance, what will decide premise (P2)’s truthor falsity will be the rather significant matter of what characteristics all persons have in virtue ofbeing persons, and whether fetuses have those characteristics or not. In other words, a correctanalysis of what is meant by ‘person’ will be essential to whether the argument is sound orunsound. It is in this way that analysis is an essential component of philosophy itself.My topic in this short essay is conceptual analysis in its classical or traditional sense, andmy primary goal here is to give as clear a statement as possible of the nature of classical analysis.I occupy myself with that task in §1. Although my main focus here is exegetical, it should bepointed out that the classical notion of analysis has been exposed to a great deal of criticism overthe years, and a few of the more common objections to the classical notion of analysis areconsidered in §2. Some alternatives to the classical view of analyses are noted in §3.1. Classical analysisI begin with the question of the nature of those propositions that themselves are analyses.According to the picture of analysis under consideration here, an analysis is an analysis of aconcept: Just as a proposition is what is meant by a complete declarative sentence, a concept iswhat is meant by, or what is expressed by linguistic items such as predicates, adjectives, and thelike. For instance, the concept of being green is what is meant by the predicate ‘is green’, andthe concept of being a star is what is meant the predicate ‘is a star’. What an analysis is of is a3concept, and an analysis is a proposition that gives the meaning of those expressions of theconcept being analyzed.1A classical conceptual analysis2 will do this in the following way. Take the concept ofbeing a square. A classical analysis of that concept will be in the form of a set of necessary andjointly sufficient conditions that will, among other things, specify what it is to be a square. Suchan analysis will include a list of necessary conditions, each of which is a condition that has to besatisfied in order for something to be a square. The conjunction of that list of necessaryconditions is itself a sufficient condition for being a square, in that if a thing satisfies all of thoseconditions, then that thing must be a square. Put more formally,A necessary condition for being an F is a condition that something must satisfy inorder for it to be an F.A sufficient condition for being an F is a condition such that if something satisfiesthat condition, then it must be an F. 1 For the purposes of elucidation of the nature of classical conceptual analysis, this is all thatneeds to be said concerning the question of what a concept itself is. On deeper investigation ofthe issue, there are of course some competing views on the subject: On one view, concepts areidentical to the words or phrases used to express them; on another, they are a sort of idea ormental category that one has in one’s head; on still another view, they are abstract entities.There are other views as well. While I take no stand on this issue here, it does seem as if theright view of the nature of concepts themselves will have bearing on whether every concept has aclassical conceptual analysis. To consider one kind of example, suppose that concepts really areidentical to a sort of mental category by which we sort things as being in that category or not,and suppose further that concepts construed that way can include categories of things that onlyhave typical features, rather than features describable in terms of necessary conditions (to bediscussed shortly). If this is what concepts are, then not every concept will have a classicalanalysis, since analyses in terms of typical features are not classical analyses.2 Some would call such a proposition a definition. However, one might use a more refined termand call them classical definitions, since there seem to be many sorts of definitions (partialdefinitions, ostensive definitions, procedural definitions, etc.). This alternate terminology isagreeable enough, but I will use the term classical analysis to speak of such propositions.4Necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for being an F are a set of necessaryconditions such that satisfying all of them is sufficient for being an F.For the concept of being a square, the following serves as a correct analysis: A square is a 4-sided closed plane figure with sides all the same length, and with neighboring sides meeting atright angles. This might be put more formally as follows:x is a square if and only if: (1) x


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